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MS untraced; text is taken from
Robert Galloway Kirkpatrick Jnr, ‘The Letters of Robert
Southey to Mary Barker From 1800 to 1826’ (unpublished
PhD, Harvard, 1967), pp. 20-21 [where it is dated
December 1801]. Previously published: John Wood
Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of
Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856), I,
pp. 180–181.Dating note: Miss Barker had visited
Southey in London and left by 3 December 1801 (Southey
to Danvers 2-3 December 1801, Letter 634). This letter
was written in reply to a letter of Mary Barker’s and in
expectation of her visit. A date of mid-late November
1801 can therefore be suggested for this
letter.

These letters were edited with the assistance of Carol Bolton, Tim Fulford and Ian Packer

For permission to publish the text of MSS in their possession, the editor wishes to thank the Beinecke Rare
Books and Manuscript Library, Yale University; Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New
York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations; the Bodleian Library Oxford University; the
British Library; Boston Public Library; the Syndics of Cambridge University Library; the Syndics of the
Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge; Haverford College, Connecticut; the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; the
Hornby Library, Liverpool Libraries and Information Services; the Houghton Library, Harvard University;
the John Rylands Library, Manchester; the Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas; Luton
Museum (Bedfordshire County Council); Massachusetts Historical Society; McGill University Library; the
National Library of Scotland; the Newberry Library, Chicago; the New York Public Library (Pforzheimer
Collections); the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York; the Public Record Offices of Bedford, Suffolk (Bury
St Edmunds) and Northumberland, the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge; the Society of
Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne; the Trustees of the William Salt Library, Stafford, the Wisbech and
Fenland Museum; the University of Virginia Library.

A research grant from the British Academy made much of the archival work possible, as did support from the
English Department of Nottingham Trent University.

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Southey's spelling has not been regularized.

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in brackets.

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626. Robert Southey to Mary Barker, [mid-late November 1801]Address:
To/ Miss Barker.MS: MS untraced; text is taken from
Robert Galloway Kirkpatrick Jnr, ‘The Letters of Robert
Southey to Mary Barker From 1800 to 1826’ (unpublished
PhD, Harvard, 1967), pp. 20-21 [where it is dated
December 1801]Previously published: John Wood
Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of
Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856), I,
pp. 180–181.Dating note: Miss Barker had visited
Southey in London and left by 3 December 1801 (Southey
to Danvers 2-3 December 1801, Letter 634). This letter
was written in reply to a letter of Mary Barker’s and in
expectation of her visit. A date of mid-late November
1801 can therefore be suggested for this
letter.

Charlotte SmithCharlotte Turner Smith (1749-1806;
DNB), poet and novelist; author,
among many other works, of Celestina
(1791) and The Old Manor House
(1793). I see is better acquainted with John
BunyanJohn
Bunyan (1628-1688; DNB), author of
Pilgrim’s Progress
(1678-1684). than with Robert Southey. that she
will find out whenever we meet.Mary Barker was an old friend of
Charlotte Smith; they spent the winter together in
London in 1801-1802. as for panegyric, I never
praised living being yet except Mary
WollstonecraftSouthey’s ‘To Mary Wollstonecraft’ first
appeared in Poems (Bristol, 1797), p.
3. – not even BonaparteNapoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821, First
Consul 1799-1804, Emperor of the French
1804-1814). in his honest days. she I perceive
still clings to France – but France has played the traitor
with Liberty. – Mary
Barker – it is not I who have turned round. I
stand where I stood looking at the rising sun – & now
the sun has set behind me! –

England has mended – is mending – will mend.
I have still faith enough in God & hope enough of man.
but not of France! Freedom cannot grow up in that hot bed of
immorality. that oak must root in a hardier soil – England
or Germany. a military despotism! – popery reestablished –
the negroes again to be enslaved!Southey mentions Napoleon’s assumption of
control in France by a military coup on 9 November 1799,
the signature of a Concordat between France and the
Papacy in July 1801, and preparations for an expedition,
which sailed on 14 December 1801, to re-conquer the
French colony of Haiti. – Why had not the man
perished before the Walls of AcreNapoleon’s plan to advance from Egypt
into Palestine was halted by his failure to take the
city of Acre in a siege of March-May 1799. in his
greatness & his glory! – I was
asked to write a poem upon that defeat, & half tempted
to do it because it went to my very heart –

I wish we could offer you a bed – lodgings
cramp one sadly. Ediths love. – we are eager to see you –